Movies: Past, present and future

EXCLUSIVE: Chace Crawford has begun to push out in some interesting filmic directions. Known as the hypotenuse of the Serena-Blair love triangle on TV's "Gossip Girl," the 25-year-old played a philosophical drug dealer in Joel Schumacher's "Twelve" last year and recently signed on to star opposite Katie Holmes in a romantic comedy called "Responsible Adults."

Now he looks to take a turn to the political. Crawford is attached to play the role of an accused South African murderer in "The House Gun," an independent-film adaptation of an acclaimed novel from Nobel Prize-winner Nadine Gordimer, according to a person familiar with the production who asked not to be identified because financing details for the film were still being worked out.

Pierce Brosnan is also attached to play Crawford's father, a respected architect who is convinced of his son's innocence, the source said.

Gordimer's 1998 novel focuses on Harald Lingard (Brosnan) and his son, who at the start of the novel is accused of shooting and killing his housemate. The family then hires a black lawyer, in what becomes a story of morality and race in post-apartheid South Africa. The lawyer role has yet to be cast.

The film is being produced by the company behind the screwball family comedy "City Island," which became an art-house hit last year. A principal at the company declined to comment on "House Gun" casting.

The route from the CW to the big screen is not always a smooth one. But Crawford has some esteemed footsteps to follow: His "Gossip Girl" costar Blake Lively appeared in last fall's Ben Affleck-directed crime drama "The Town" and stars opposite Ryan Reynolds in the upcoming "Green Lantern."

EXCLUSIVE: It's been a while since we've seen Pierce Brosnan in a romantic comedy -- nearly three years, in fact, since he vied for Meryl Streep's attentions in the romantic musical comedy "Mamma Mia!" In the time since. Brosnan has dabbled in a lot of other genres: political thriller ("The Ghost Writer"), widower drama ("The Greatest"), religion-themed thriller (the upcoming "Salvation Boulevard.")

But Brosnan will now return to one of his wheelhouses: He's signed on for a lead role in "All You Need Is Love," the first post-Oscar project for Susanne Bier, who took a statuette for her youth-violence drama "In a Better World" on Sunday. The movie, which Bier wrote with Brosnan in mind, shoots in Amalfi this spring.

Although Bier is known mainly for melodrama -- she also directed Danish war weepie "Brothers" and the broken-family picture "Things We Lost in the Fire," her English-language debut -- the filmmaker revealed this week that her new movie is a romance with a more buoyant feel. “It’s a tender story with a much lighter atmosphere than my previous works: Enough with conflicts,” she told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. (Her 2006 Oscar-nominated "After the Wedding," though a drama, did have a few comedic moments.)

The paper also said "Love" would center on a Danish family, although given that Brosnan doesn't speak Danish, we're imagining said family will speak English, or the movie will at least be bilingual.

Brosnan called the new project a "delightful love story" that mixes the serious and humorous. "It's a comedy -- a love story which has punch and deals with loss and a great love."

It's been eight years since Pierce Brosnan last played James Bond, but the actor still sometimes feels he's living in the shadow of the iconic spy.

In a story in Thursday's paper, Brosnan, 56, acknowledged that in the public's eye, he's still "very connected to the image and history of Bond."

"It just lives with you. It permeates your life," said the actor last week in an interview at a Beverly Hills hotel. "And you know that going in, but the reality of it -- the overcoat is really large, and can be quite heavy at times. So you have to break the shackles of that."

Brosnan has certainly thrown his effort into trying to diversify: by the end of the spring, he will have appeared in five radically different films.

His most recent project, "The Greatest," on which he also served as a producer, opens Friday and tells the story of a father grappling with the death of his son.

Even the star of that film, Carey Mulligan, said she initially identified with Brosnan as Bond.

“He is my generation’s James Bond,” said the actress. “I played the video game of him with my brother on Nintendo 64.”

But "The Greatest" is a far cry from an action thriller. It shares in the serious tone of March's "Remember Me," in which he was embattled in a different kind of father-son relationship with teen heartthrob Robert Pattinson. There has also been Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer," in which Brosnan played an emotionally distant former prime minister, as well as his less dramatic turn as a bearded centaur in "Percy Jackson and the Olympians." Later this month, he'll serve as the narrator on the environmental documentary "Oceans."